Crazy Korean Parents

Sam Richards is a Penn State University Sociology professor who seems to like Korea very much. He often invites his students of different nationalities and racial backgrounds to the front of his class and talks about things, and he seems to allot a disproportionate amount of his lecture time to Korea and the intricacies of the Korean society, something that I appreciate very much as a Korean-American. His lectures are more of interactive discussions with the students who pack his classroom (must be very popular) everyday rather than the usual one-sided delivery of information.

In one of the lectures that is on YouTube, however, he seemed to praise the Korean parents’ zeal for their kids’ early education and their ability to excel at math and science problems at such a young age. At face value, this seems like a harmless statement, but we need to look more closely at what’s really going on there.

** One word you should know for this posting: 학원 (hag-won), private tutor/institute.

In the popular K-drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo (이상한 변호사 우영우), there was an episode (Ep. 9) in which someone named Bang Gu-ppong (방구뽕) hijacking a van full of elementary school kids and “kidnapping” them for a few hours in order to… go play.

*** note on the hijacker’s name Bang Gu-ppong: bang-gu (방구) is fart. ppong (뽕) is the most often used onomatopoeia for the sound of fart. The name is clearly used to make the kids laugh. However, there was a real man named Bang Guk-bong (방국봉) who made the news years ago because he was going through the court system to legally change his name. Probably a reference to that gentleman’s name also.

Episode 9. opening scene. you see those yellow vans/buses lined up in front of the elementary school? this really does happen everywhere.

kids don’t even go home. after school’s over, these yellow vans/buses take the kids straight to their respective hagwons.

see the book this child is holding? this is not some made-up story — this is really happening everywhere in Seoul and other major cities.

the scene in which Bang Gu-ppong is announcing that he’s taking the kids to go play and be happy.

Dramatized for TV, yes, but the episode accurately depicted what is going on with the young school children in Seoul. Never mind the high school seniors who stay at school until 10 or 11pm everyday to study for the college entrance exam that’s been called by BBC as the “Most Difficult Exam in the World.” Why are the elementary school kids put under the same pressure, having to stay at the hagwons until 10pm?

Recently, I came across one of the most flabbergasting and infuriating news items (in education) that I have ever heard anywhere.

There are hagwons in Seoul that teach pre-elementary school kids calculus. Let me repeat this. 6 year-olds are completing the full-year calculus curriculum before they enter elementary schools. Are you f*cking kidding me?

This man is an owner of a hagwon in Daechi-dong, an affluent area with a high concentration of these after-school private education institutes. Glorified tutoring service? There is an element of that to be sure, but in Korea this is on a different scale and a huge industry. So much so that some of these hagwons are traded on the Korean Stock Exchange.

Anyway, the owner pictured above says in an interview, “some aggressive parents are forcing their kindergarten children to study the differential and integral calculus before they enter elementary school.”

I don’t know how else to put it—some Korean parents are certifiably C.R.A.Z.Y.

In addition, this SBS News reports that there are “Medical School Prep Groups” for elementary school children at the Daechi-dong hagwons. This news report says these kids have all completed the high school senior level calculus curriculum and are reviewing what they have learned. And what’s more, some hagwons even have Medical School Prep Groups for kindergarten age children.

According to the Korean Bureau of Statistics, an average family in the top 20 percentile in total income that has a child between the ages of 13 and 18 spends about 1.14 million won per month (about $1,000 USD) on these hagwons while the same family spends the same amount on the food + housing + all utilities.

In the lower income brackets, the percentage of the family income spent on hagwons was actually larger than the money spent on the essential necessities of subsistence.

225 newly admitted students (6% of total incoming freshmen) to Seoul National University (the top school in Korea) filed for leave of absence, reportedly to prepare for re-entrance to medical school

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why becoming a medical doctor has become an end-all-be-all lifegoal for some people. I keep reading these articles about these top university students in other STEM fields quitting school because they want to re-take the college entrance exam and get into medical school. Huh? Sure it’s a noble profession but it is considered one of the jobs that’s going to be replaced by AI in the near future.

The greatest ice hockey player ever Wayne Gretzky has once said about the secret of his success,

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it’s been.